Firestorm

27

The Chinese paratroops above began firing automatic weapons, but they were at a terrible disadvantage. Three of them were shot dead in the first volley from the SEALS. The other three survived for another twenty seconds before they died in a murderous cross fire from the men on the ground.

Murdock waved his men to the side. "Let's get away from here as fast as we can," he called. "Our firing will be zeroed in on by every Chinese soldier within miles. They'll rush to this spot like a pack of hyenas after a fresh-killed antelope."

They jogged to the left, away from the sound of the planes. Murdock slowed it to a fast walk. He touched his lip mike. "Fernandez, Frazier, how are you holding up?"

"Frazier here. Damn good. Got me one of them paratroops back there."

"Fernandez?"

"Not the best, Skipper. Damn arm hurts like fire. Got off some shots with my Sig. I'm not holding anybody back. Just hope we find that water before long."

"Me too, Fernandez. You hang in there."

Murdock checked the landscape. They were coming into a small range of hills now that had some cover. Not tall timber, but scrub trees of some kind, heavy brush here and there. A few of the hills looked to rise three hundred feet off the level land the platoon had been on.

He aimed at the heaviest part of the cover and kept moving.

Somebody clicked twice on the mike, and the SEALS dropped to the ground. The whispered message came into earpieces.

"We got company. Eight to ten soldiers out front a hundred yards folding up parachutes. Damn white chutes stand out like beacons."

Murdock knew it was Red's voice. He lifted up and sprinted out thirty yards to where Red should be. Red was just past that a ways and flat on the ground behind some brush.

"Get the snipers and MGS up here," Murdock said in his radio mike. "Everyone up thirty yards front in a line of skirmishers. We'll take them out before they set up."

It took four minutes to get the troops in line and ready. Then Murdock aimed in with the AK-47 he carried and fired off three rounds.

That was the signal for the rest to start firing. The two machine guns blasted five-round bursts and the sniper rifles jolted. Murdock put on his NVG, but it didn't help much at this range. He saw one parachuter go down, then another one. He figured on eight of them by the number of white chutes. The SEALS took some return fire, but it was not organized. He guessed that the officer or noncom in charge had been one to feel the wrath of SEAL lead early.

"Cease fire," Murdock said into his radio, and the fire from the rise slowed and then stopped. Below they saw two men running away from them.

Murdock frowned as he realized this meant the Chinese now would have another fix on their location. He checked with Ching, who studied the stars a minute, then angled the SEALS just past the dead Chinese jumpers on a due-east course. The damn water had to be over there somewhere. Murdock knew it.

"Where the fuck are the rest of those jump troops?" Jaybird asked Murdock.

The platoon leader shook his head. "Scattered. Maybe not by design, could have been tricky winds. Night jumps are always a hazard for us. It must have been for them. I've got Red hunting a spot we can hole up for a while and make a radio call. It's time we ask our uncle for some help."

"Didn't think he could do that."

"Won't hurt a hell of a lot to ask. We've got no more than two hours of darkness left. Something's got to happen pretty soon or we're stuck in the middle of goddamned China in the daylight."

They found a small hill with heavy woods, and Murdock had Holt break out the AN/PRC-117D SATCOM radio. He removed the disc antenna, folded it out, and lined it up with a satellite in synchronous orbit with the earth and 22,300 miles overhead.

They had agreed to talk in the encrypted frequency that the carrier could pick up offshore. On the second try the carrier answered.

"Captain, we've run into some trouble. We're about five miles inland maybe five klicks south of Amoy. Could use some air support and a pickup by a pair of Blackhawks."

There was a pause. Then the speaker came on.

"Yes, understand your problem. As we talked before, such operations are absolutely prohibited by the Chief himself. Any chance you can get to the coast?"

"Not in the two hours of darkness we have left. At night who will know what aircraft come in here for us? You can key in on our position from this signal. We have wounded. We need air support right now while we're not under attack."

Don Stroh's voice came over the speaker.

"Murdock, you know we can't do that. Why the hell you so far inland?

Don't answer. Tell you what. We'll ask the Taiwanese Air Force to give you some support. It's their damn war. We'll get back to you. Find a hide-hole and crawl in. This could take some time. We don't even have direct radio contact with Taipei. Hold on there, man. I'll move mountains for you if I can. Oh, did you take care of those ships and the missiles?"

"That's a Roger, sir, to both. No gas on Taiwan. Our situation is that right now we need some air support or a miracle, and I'm about fresh out of miracles."

"Go to ground. Find a good hide-hole. I'll talk with the folks in Taipei."

"I don't like the idea, but looks like we have no choice, We'll do what we can and give you another call once we're situated. Murdock out."

He put down the mike and scowled. The platoon had heard the conversation.

"We've got two hours to find a place to hole up that will keep us out of sight during the daylight. Not a chance any of our people or any rescue planes are going to come looking for us tonight or in the sunshine tomorrow."

"Hide where?" Jaybird asked. "This is fucking China, remember?"

"We could dig individual holes if we had entrenching tools," Murdock said. "We don't, so that's out."

"Maybe find a briar patch like we did in Lebanon," Jaybird said.

"Wrong kind of vegetation here," Magic said.

"So we keep moving toward the ocean," Murdock said. "Maybe we can luck out and miss the rest of the patrols and get to water in two hours."

"Ye, maybe," Jaybird said. "Don't count on it."

They formed up in their usual combat order and kept on moving to the south and east. They topped a small rise and Red came back and talked to the L-T.

"We've got something up there, but I'm not sure what it is. Looks like a small village, but it could be an army camp, Seems like a lot of noise for a village."

Murdock went up and took a look. They stared down a gentle slope at lights four hundred yards ahead.

"Yeah," Murdock said, looking through the Starlight scope on Magic's 89 sniper rifle. "Military all right. Take a look. A damned Chinese company or maybe two companies. Must be three hundred men down there."

"So they'll have out security and ambush patrols and the whole damned routine."

"Probably," Murdock said. "We go around them. Which side?" They checked both sides of the quarter-mile-wide camp. On one side they saw a small stream, and on the other a low row of hills slanting down from the ridgeline they had been following.

"Ridge?"

"Yep. Looks like these troops have just been trucked in here or marched in and they're setting up their camp before they sack out for a few hours. Then they come look for us with sunup."

"We better move."

They told the platoon what was ahead of them. The men kept their weapons ready to fire, moved into single file, and took Red Nicholson's lead along the far side of the ridge and, they hoped, past the Chinese.

They hiked silently for ten minutes. Then Red stopped them with two clicks on the mike. Everyone hit the dirt. They waited.

Murdock moved silently forward. Red hovered behind a tree looking ahead.

The Platoon Leader couldn't see a thing through the darkness. Murdock heard one silenced round from Red's CAR-15, then a soft groan and silence. Red darted forward, his K-Bar out in his right hand.

The radio clicked once and Murdock hurried forward. A dead Chinese soldier lay in the trail. Red had just finished relieving him of his AK-47 ammo and rolled him down a small slope.

"Might be some more sentries out here," Red said. "We best move our tails around these puppies in a rush."

The platoon moved faster then, around the Chinese camp and on to the east. Gradually the row of hills became lower and lower until they were in a wide river valley. They saw no river.

Ching checked the stars through the clear night and angled them a little to the right to keep on their easterly route.

"Hope to hell we're going the right direction," Magic Brown growled at Ching.

"You and me both, brother," Ching said, his grin showing in the pale moonlight.

They worked ahead slower now. There were buildings here and there. They were in fields now — rice, row crops. Murdock couldn't figure out what it was. At least there were no flooded rice paddies to wade through.

They found a road and moved along it in a nearly eastern direction. Murdock sniffed trying to see if he could smell the salty tang of ocean air. Nothing.

The sound came from behind them and grew and grew until Murdock hit his mike button twice to put the men on the ground. Overhead two jets slammed past them at no more than three hundred feet. They made a thunderous roar as they flashed past, their jet engines showing that their tails were on fire.

"Chinese SU-27's, probably," Ching said. "Russian-built with 2.3-mach speed. But even at six hundred miles per hour that's ten miles a minute. With seventeen hundred and sixty yards in a mile, times ten, that's seventeen thousand six hundred yards they travel in a minute. Breaking that down in yards per second, the plane is moving over the ground at nearly three hundred yards every second. Not a hell of a lot of time to give close ground support for the Chinese troops."

"Just the idea of the jets being here is not good news for our team," Murdock said. "You sure of those figures?"

"I don't have my calculator with me, but if memory serves, that was a problem in a class I had on aircraft recognition."

"Let's keep moving. What are these buildings?"

"Mostly farms," Ching said. "The farmers live in small villages, then come out to their land to work it during the day. The buildings are for tools, machinery, storing crops. No people in them, usually."

Headlights flared in the night ahead of them. They broke into two groups, faded off the road thirty yards into the fields, and lay down.

Two trucks came by, both military. One had a machine gun mounted on the front with a gunner draped over his weapon. Murdock figured he was sleeping and would be awake the moment the truck stopped. Both rigs kept going down the road.

Ahead and to the right, Murdock made out a new ridge of low hills working generally eastward. He shifted his men that way, leaving the road. They were less than a hundred yards away from the road when they heard someone coming.

There was low chattering in Chinese and some shouts. Murdock's men flattened out in a line that would give them maximum firepower on the targets.

They waited.

Five minutes later the first of the group came in sight. Magic Brown swore softly. "Hold fire," Brown said. "L-T. I got them in the scope. They're civilians. Looks like they're farmers coming out to start a long day's work."

"Hold fire," Murdock said in the mike. They lay there as about twenty men and boys tramped past. They were almost ready to get up and move when another band came behind the first. These were women, Magic Brown informed the SEALS.

It was another five minutes before they could lift up and move toward the low hills.

"We better get out of here damn fast or we're gonna be in the middle of a whole swarm of farmers," Ching said. Murdock agreed, and they double-timed down a path between fields, used a road for a half mile, then cut across a field that led into a smattering of brush and trees that were on the first of the row of hills.

By the time they were inside the trees with enough cover to make Murdock happy, there was less than an hour to sunrise.

"We've got to find someplace to hole up during daylight," Murdock said.

"Like where?" Ron Holt asked.

"So what the hell are we supposed to do?" It was Ronson.

"In those other hills I saw what I thought was a cave," Red Nicholson said. "We could look for one around here."

"Yes," Murdock said. "We'll move higher and into the thickest growth of trees we can find. Keep on the lookout for any kind of hiding spot, including caves. Let's go." They worked higher.

The darkness began to recede. There was a slow lightening of the sky ahead of them in the east.

Murdock didn't want to hide his men behind trees for fourteen hours. The Chinese troops would be all over this area come sunup.

Red touched his shoulder. "Sir, down there, that small valley that leads to the east. See that black area almost at the base of the hill?"

"A cave?"

"I can tell you for sure in about ten minutes."

"Go, Red. Run the whole damn way. It's past time we had these troops out of the hot sun."

Red Nicholson took off at a lope down the hill toward the small valley a quarter of a mile over. Murdock watched him run, then looked at the brightening sky to the east and frowned.